


Artistry

by zarabithia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:05:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: Steve, Peggy, Howard, and Bucky take advantage of some downtime during the war.





	Artistry

Once, Erskine had asked Steve if he wanted to kill Nazis. Back then, Steve had given his stubborn answer about bullies, but now … now, Steve understands what Erskine had been trying to say. In that examination room, Steve had believed that Erskine had been mocking him. But in truth, that kind old man had been issuing a warning about the bloodiness of war, and the inevitability of something that Steve had only been exposed to, at that point, through stories from his ma.

Steve’s never been very good at heeding warnings.

But the warnings have come to pass and there are blood stains on the Captain America uniform that will never come out, even once they get back to the states.

“I’m very rich, Rogers,” Howard tells him sleepily. “All that money, and you think I can’t get it clean?”

Howard’s eyes are a very dark brown, dark enough to be black, and his thick black hair is a strange sight when it is tousled. But Bucky has done a very thorough job at scrubbing away all of that rich man veneer until it fell to the floor alongside Howard’s expensive pants, Steve’s costume, and the uniforms worn by Bucky and Peggy.

Anyway, who is Steve to criticize Bucky’s artistry?

“All that money, you should buy this bar, after the war,” Bucky says. His voice is more wary than weary, and Steve tries not to dwell on when wariness became a permanent accent on Buck’s words - just like he tries not to dwell on the number of people who have shared this bar’s tiny hidden bedroom before the four of them.

The tsking voice of his mother, in his head, worries more about the lack of clean sheets than the number of limbs thrown across Steve’s body; had she lived, Steve likes to think that would be the case.

“Intriguing investment, Barnes. Make a better proposal,” Howard says. He shifts then, and the old rickety bed they’ve found themselves in groans beneath the weight. Peggy sighs at the disturbance, and Steve can feel the softness of her curves as she presses against his back. It’s a shared moment of disgruntlement, of Agent Carter letting her professionalism slip a bit - just like she had when she’d almost shot him.

He hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but he knows now that not everyone gets to see it. So today (tonight? They’ve been here long enough that it must be night, but a glance outside and the entire world is still white, so perhaps it is somehow still day. Or perhaps time has slowed down in order to grant them a longer reprieve than they expect or perhaps deserve.)

“We can always fuck in the back room?” Bucky offers.

“But why the back room when we could fuck in rooms far more grand? Rooms with beds bigger than this whole bar.”

Peggy laughs into the nape of Steve’s neck and it tickles in a way that a super soldier shouldn’t feel, perhaps. But Bucky leans across Howard to kiss the smile that results on Steve’s face as Peggy says, “Your bedroom’s not that big, Howard.”

Howard pouts, whether because Bucky slides down beside him without also giving him a kiss or because Peggy has scolded him, Steve doesn’t know. But he doesn’t pout for long. Instead, he simply shrugs his shoulders and offers, “But it will be. After the war. It has to be, doesn’t it?”

There’s a pause, filled with silence following Howard’s breaking of their standard rule never to talk about the end of the war. In that pause, Steve imagines that the wind howls a little harder, screaming a warning that perhaps they have indulged too much happiness during war time.

Steve’s really never been good at heeding warnings.

“Yes,” he says firmly, in defiance of the wind and the silence between the four of them. “It does.”


End file.
